Things Entertainment - Accessibility Innovation Art Share Out

Things Entertainment first shared these techniques, and a demo illustrating their use, at the VR for Good Summit in Washington DC, which was held on November 17, 2017 at the Milken Institute School of Public Health, George Washington University. Key points about these techniques:

While many existing accessibilty guidelines and standards apply directly or with slight modification to applications that use augmented reality, only new techniques that are specific to augmented reality are listed here.

Not all of these techniques will be appropriate for every augmented reality application. These are techniques to consider for use in your applications. Perhaps they will help make your applications more accessible to people with disabilities and perhaps they will make your applications more engaging and realistic to a general audience.

Every technique listed has been implemented in at least one test application by Things Entertainment. We won't list techniques without ensuring that they can be implemented on at least one reasonably priced current platform.

Things Entertainment is currently developing, refining, testing and researching these techniques. They are a work in progress.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. See links in the footer.

1. Spatial or Positional Sound Effects

Provide sounds that sound as though they are coming from the location of augmented reality objects in the real world using stereo or surround sound. Sounds can be obvious, subtle and/or only present or only emphasized based on certain user settings.

Benefits:

General audience: Increases realism

People with mobility impairments: Reduces the amount of movement needed to locate objects

People who are blind or have low vision: Makes game play functional with less reliance on text descriptions

2. Distance Interactive Sound Effects / Distance Interactive Haptics

Play audio cues or haptic cues when a real world device or a real world controller is pointed precisely at an augmented reality object (target) in real world space. Types of precise pointing include:

Use of controller (like a laser pointer)

Tapping or panning on a touch screen as secondary precise positioning technique to narrow down location, if another method is provided for less precise positioning

Panning with a touch screen itself (moving the device)

Combinations of the above for more and less precise positioning

For greater realism, distance interactive sounds can also be spatial or positional and sound like they come from the target.

Benefits:

General audience & people with low vision: Provides user feedback and helps confirm game play targets when item is difficult to see or game play is very fast

People who are blind or have low vision: Makes game play functional by providing artifical line of sight

3. Real World Location Haptics / Real World Location Sound Effects

Play haptic cues or audio cues when a real world device or a real world controller intersects with an augmented reality object in real world space. (Note that in practical coding you might be testing for intersection with a point in space slightly outside of the actual location of the real world device or the real world controller.)

Benefits:

General audience: Increases realism

People who are blind: Provides an experience of augmented reality

People who are blind or have low vision: Makes game play functional with less reliance on text descriptions

4. Adjustable Location of Augmented Reality Objects for Easy Access

Allow users to move augmented reality objects that they need to interact with to be lower (e.g. for wheelchair access), to be higher (e.g. to avoid bending), and/or to be closer (reduce motion needed).

Benefits:

General audience: Ease of use for games with "grind". More pleasant/faster game-play for advanced players in sandbox games.

Smaller-space players: Makes it possible to move augmented reality objects that might be inaccessible because they appear in the same space as real world objects (such as a wall).

People with mobility impairments: Reduces the amount of movement and the types of movement needed to play

People who are blind or have low vision: Makes it possible to reduce the real world field of play, making location tasks simpler

5. Avoid Space Conflicts

Avoid precisely matching the position and size of augmented reality objects with the position and size of real world objects. For example, it is good practice for augmented reality horizontal planes (e.g. tables, desks) to overhang any real world horizonal planes that they may be immitating.

Benefits:

General audience, Smaller-space players & People with mobility impairments: Avoids inaccessible augmented reality objects after adjustments are made for guideline 4.

People with mobility impairments: Increases options in the type of movement, the angle of movement and the direction of movement needed to interact with augmented reality objects, because it is possible to move through augmented reality objects, while real world objects block motion